


Sorry

by MeansToOffend (goodmorning)



Series: Pick Me Up [21]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017-2018 NHL Season, Jealousy, Other, Philadelphia Flyers, Pick-Up Lines, Pining, feelings are hard sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 20:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorning/pseuds/MeansToOffend
Summary: "The jealousy makes him want to tear off his skin, to become someone else who maybe wouldn’t be such a fucking asshole. If you love someone, aren’t you supposed to be happy for them?TK isn’t happy. He’s frustrated, mostly. Sometimes he’s angry.Sometimes it’s at himself."





	Sorry

It’s Couts that texts him about it first, with a dumb joke about some kid coming in and taking their jobs. TK just chuckles, happy they’re picking second, happy to be getting some reinforcements and improving their depth, and doesn’t think too much about it. After dinner, though, he gets a text from Provy, and then he can’t stop thinking about it.

“!!!!!!” is all he says, and if it was anyone else TK would have dismissed it as excitement about the Flyers’ luck or pleasure at probably having another young guy in the room. But it’s Provy, and TK is pretty much constitutionally required to overly read into every single thing he says or does, because he’s super interesting.

Okay, no, that’s a lie, sort of. It’s not that he’s interesting, it’s just that TK finds him to be because he has a big dumb crush on the guy and it refuses to go away. 

And TK had kind of hoped, at the end of last season, that maybe there was something there after all, but it hadn’t happened then, and neither of them has mentioned it since, not in a text or a snap or even a DM, and now there’s this lottery win. Which, well, TK realises, with a shiver down his back, one of the consensus top two picks this season is the captain of the Brandon Fucking Wheat Kings, and that brings back a fragment of a memory from January. The team were all talking about their junior careers, and Provy, after more information than anyone needed to know about the guys in Brandon, blushed and smiled and said, “Oh, and Pats, you know, he’s way too good. He’s going to make the NHL the second he’s drafted.” He remembers recognising the signs - too-familiar signs - of a kid in love, remembers wondering if it was requited, if they knew.

Provy hadn’t mentioned ‘Pats’ again, but he’s a defenseman even in his manner off the ice, the careful type. If anyone had said something to him, if he’d even thought that they noticed, he wouldn’t have spoken his feelings aloud twice. 

And _had_ TK imagined, after locker cleanout-?

Well. Maybe they broke up?

But he doesn’t really believe that.

The thing is, almost everyone in his hometown is a Leafs fan, and even though they made the playoffs this season, their fans still know a thing or two about draft lotteries. There are “Nico or Nolan?” “Nolan or Nico?” stories everywhere he goes, every single one of them reminding him that he’s deeply, selfishly hoping that New Jersey decides they’re short of Canadians, or that they hate Hischier’s eyebrows, or whatever else it takes to have Patrick be a state away from Provy. 

Sometimes he feels like just one state isn’t far enough, like even Vancouver wouldn’t be far enough.

The jealousy makes him want to tear off his skin, to become someone else who maybe wouldn’t be such a fucking asshole. If you love someone, aren’t you supposed to be happy for them? 

TK isn’t happy. He’s frustrated, mostly. Sometimes he’s angry.

Sometimes it’s at himself.

He watches the draft. He doesn’t try to pretend, even to himself, that he’s not going to, just sits there alone in his house, trying not to bite his nails, to let his heart sink as Shero holds up a jersey red as the Canadian flag, red as the Swiss flag, and Hischier pulls it on. 

Hexy stands at the podium. “Philadelphia selects, from the Western Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings, Nolan Patrick.”

TK turns off the television and decides to just sit in the dark for a while.

“!!!!!!” Provy sends again, and TK drops his phone in his lap so he doesn’t throw it across the room.

\--

The jealous part of TK wants to hate the rookie from day one, resents his luck and his timing and his history with Provy, whatever that history actually is. But most of him feels guilty about this, because Provy doesn’t belong to anyone but himself, and it doesn’t feel fair to resent anyone for happenstance, doesn’t seem right to hate Pats for having the same feelings TK himself does.

Pats is just as obvious as Provy was, too, shadowing him like he’s afraid to lose sight of him, heart eyes visible from miles away. And TK’s first reaction to this was roaring jealousy, visions of the two of them kissing and cuddling all jumbled up in his head.

But when he shoves the anger away, he finds that Pats is actually pretty easy to like. He’s quiet, even for a rookie, and in a room like theirs, full of loudmouths and showboats, that’s extremely welcome. This could have been mistaken for a weakness, maybe, but it turns out he’s also pretty lethal with a chirp when he wants to be.

G makes a dramatic entrance before the home opener, shouting, “Hey, boys, sorry I’m winning the best dressed award tonight!” His suit is nice enough, maybe a little flashy, but of course saying so would miss the point.

“Well, look at Mr. Big Shot over here,” AMac calls out. 

Jake snorts. “The Russian mob called, they want their suit back.”

“If you spent more than fifty cents on that thing, you got ripped off. I’d take it back, man,” says Simmer, and G actually looks almost hurt at that one.

That would probably be the end of it, though, except that then Pats speaks up. “I’m pretty sure your dog could dress better than you do, G.”

And G narrows his eyes in thought before quirking an eyebrow. “Which one?”

Pats is already prepared, impressively enough. “Either,” he says. “It doesn’t matter, because they’re both much cuter than you.”

G almost dies laughing, but manages to clap him on the shoulder. “You’re going to fit right in here.”

And Pats just grins at him.

That’s another thing that’s easy to like about him - he smiles so easily. Maybe the rough edges and the wear of a full NHL season will scour the habit out of him, but TK hopes not. It’s a nice smile, a little goofy and a little sweet. Pats is pretty attractive when he smiles.

And when he doesn’t smile.

_Oh shit._

One of the reasons TK fell for Provy so easily was that they shared a lot of common interests, even besides hockey: everything from movies, to television, to giving each other music recommendations. So really, when he looks at it that way, with a music library half in Russian, what’s one more thing?

\--

He stops looking at them when they’re together, the way they stand just a little too close, speaking in low words meant only for each other. He doesn’t want to think about it, either, so he doesn’t. He throws himself into the game instead. 

Trying to avoid his sophomore slump is an easier task than trying to avoid his feelings, anyway.

Once or twice, he catches them arguing, feverish whispered discussions that end with them clamming up as soon as they notice him. TK doesn’t ask, though he can see them wanting him to, and there’s a look of desperation on Provy’s face when he excuses himself as blandly as possible. TK ignores it, like he ignores the lack of Provy’s thigh against his at team meetings, even if the memories of the look and the warmth come back to him at the worst possible moments.

Pats keeps trying to get him alone, and TK doesn’t want to know why. The only thing he can think of is to warn him off of Provy, but he’s already stepped off; there’s nothing else he can do short of asking for a trade, and he doesn’t want to. Philadelphia is his home now, whatever that’s worth, and G is his captain, and he’s not going to give up what little he has going for him here, even if it does make him uncomfortable sometimes.

That feels a little too personal to say out loud, though. Mostly he just avoids Pats even harder than he already was so that he doesn’t have to talk about it.

It’s a good strategy, right up until it stops working.

TK is at the bar, trying to dodge Jake, who he owes a drink, and Moose, who he owes money, and in the process of avoiding them TK forgets who’s at the head of the ‘people to avoid’ list - until he drapes himself over TK’s shoulders.

“Hey, stranger,” Pats says, and is that a hint of a slur in his voice? “Buy me a drink?”

“Uh,” says TK, very eloquently. “You… what?”

“A drink,” Pats says, into TK’s neck. His thumb strokes TK’s arm.

Unlike Pats and Provy, though, TK can hold a poker face, so he does, waiting to find out what the other shoe is, and when it’s going to drop.

Someone gently levers Pats off him and onto a barstool. Heat flares in TK’s chest. The other shoe is Provy.

“Sorry,” he says. “He got very drunk, I was supposed to watch him. I hope he didn’t bother you?”

And TK is about to put on his bland face again and tell Provy it’s not a problem, except that there’s something wrong with the whole situation, and without the distracting weight of Pats, the warmth of him on TK’s back, he thinks he knows what it is. “Shouldn’t Fil have been watching him? Or AMac?”

“Oh,” says Provy, obviously about to lie. “Um, they had to use the bathroom.”

“What, both at the same time?” TK asks, and then something else occurs to him. “Wait a minute, he can’t be that drunk, G wouldn’t let him.” There’s a snort from the barstool, and Provy gives him a very unimpressed look that suddenly reminds TK much too vividly of the time G had paid for Provy’s drinks last season, and kept buying, and kept buying, and- “Okay, fine. But Simmer definitely wouldn’t let G let him.”

And this is undoubtedly true, because everyone listens to Simmer. So Provy really doesn’t have a leg to stand on here, and he seems to know it. He stays silent, looking imploringly at Pats, who looks back at Provy, equally pleading.

TK sits there, waiting for them to finish their weird unspoken conversation and actually talk, but they don’t. “Do you guys want to explain, or are we just going to wait here until they close?” 

“Oh, alright,” Pats sighs. “We thought that, you know, you might be into Provy? And it took me a long time to get him to tell me about it, but he’s obviously into you, too. But he was too nervous to say anything to you about it, so I thought, what if he could rescue you from me? Then maybe it would be easier. Only you figured out that something was up, and now here we are.”

“Are you two not…?” TK asks. 

Provy looks to Pats again, shoulders tense. Pats gives TK a half-smile that makes him feel off-balance somehow. “Well, you know, I’m really good at sharing,” he says.

TK’s brain breaks just a little. “Do you- we- how does this-” he starts, before he remembers where they are. “Wait,” he says. “Come home with me.” And Pats starts to step away, but TK grabs his arm before he can go. “No, you come too. We all need to talk about this, because it sounds like an idea I’d like but it also sounds really complicated, and it would be best to discuss in private, right?”

“Of course,” says Provy, hitting Pats with his ‘I told you so’ face. The familiarity of it is strangely comforting, TK thinks. 

Pats doesn’t see it, though, gaze fixed on his arm, where TK’s hand is still holding him. “Sorry,” he says, letting go.

But Pats licks his lips, once, eyes dark even for this low light, and TK wonders just how long their conversation is going to be.

**Author's Note:**

> \- In a lot of ways this is the angstier spiritual sibling of the Devils fic.  
> \- Also I'm irrationally angry at the Wheat Kings for having a two-word name instead of one like everyone else. _Why would you do this to me?_  
>  \- I kind of wanted to subvert some of the pickup lines in some small ways (see: Edmonton), and this was a good one for that since it's less a line and more a situation.  
> \- The original, which I got off the reddit pickup line thread of yesteryear, was along the lines of: send your drunk friend to bother someone, and then go "rescue" them; "Sorry my friend's a jerk, hi, I'm..."  
> \- The ending to this was supposed to be a bit jokier, with TK trolling them like "No thanks, I prefer Nolan actually" but that didn't quite fit the tone.  
> \- "Wayne Simmonds is the only responsible Flyer" is my favourite thing, if it wasn't obvious.


End file.
